


Lost in the Crowd

by flaming_muse



Category: Glee
Genre: Clubbing, Dancing, Episode Related, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-26
Updated: 2014-04-26
Packaged: 2018-01-20 21:12:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1525922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flaming_muse/pseuds/flaming_muse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blaine doesn’t know how such a big apartment can feel so small sometimes.</p>
<p>set soon before 5x14 (“New New York”) but with some spoilers through 5x17 (“Opening Night”)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lost in the Crowd

**Author's Note:**

> Usually my episode-related fics take place during or directly after an episode. This fic takes place well before 5x17 but is drawn from it anyway. (I also have a Kurt-POV fic mostly written, but Blaine asked me to finish his first. He’s so polite. How could I refuse?)

“ - I know I’m wearing a wig on stage, but I really think my hair care should be paid for by the production,” Rachel calls through the open bathroom door out to Kurt, who is putting the kettle on a burner in the loft’s kitchen.

“I think you can afford your own hot oil treatments, Rachel,” Kurt calls back and flicks on the heat.

Beside him, Blaine contemplates the SodaStream. What would be a good flavor combination tonight? Something tasty but soothing, maybe. He can feel the beginning of a headache forming behind his eyes.

“Suck lead, Artie!” Sam cries from the couch, accompanied by a flurry of explosions coming from the TV’s speakers, the sounds echoing around the loft.

Rachel leans out of the bathroom door, wrapped in a dressing gown with her hair hanging down loose around her shoulders. “It’s more than hot oil, Kurt!” she says. “You know that. The sweat and compression of the wig requires thoughtful but rigorous shampooing and then a good conditioning to protect my hair from the blow-out I need every night before I greet my fans at the stage door. It takes both time and money to look my best for them.”

“Or you could just come out in an artfully tousled ponytail and a fresh face like most actresses,” Kurt replies over his shoulder, his hands busy on the mugs.

“No! No no no no no!” Sam yells.

There’s a huge explosion from the television, like thunder or fireworks all but rattling the windows around them.

“ _Yes!_ ” Artie flings his hands up in the air, the controller still held in one of them.

With a smile at Artie’s excitement, Blaine bends down to dig through the little carton of flavor packets Cooper had sent with the machine. Maybe something with ginger to settle his stomach, he thinks.

“ _I_ am not most actresses,” Rachel insists. “I’m the star of the show!”

Blaine rolls his tight shoulders a little and wonders if he’ll be able to get Kurt to give him a massage later. He hates to ask, but he’s feeling so stiff. Maybe if he promises to return the favor...

He leans forward to make himself smaller as Kurt walks behind him, then pulls out a packet and stands up again.

“You’re going down!” Sam says to Artie. “Rematch time!”

“You’re not the first diva in the world,” Kurt tells Rachel.

“My fans deserve me to look my very best in their selfies,” she replies.

“Anyone want some soda?” Blaine asks the room.

“You’re going to need _another_ wheelchair to carry around your ego when I’m done with you,” Sam insists. He hesitates. “Too far, dude?”

“Nah,” Artie replies. “Although I would have gone with body bag.”

Sam nods thoughtfully. “Mm, yeah, I can see that.”

“Can we have fewer explosions and more understanding about my need for a peaceful home environment?” Rachel asks loudly, crossing her arms over her chest. Her jaw is set at a mulish angle, and she begins to tap her foot as she looks pointedly at Sam and Artie.

“She says in a bellow,” Kurt sighs and flicks off the burner.

Sam’s phone begins to ring, playing Darth Vader’s theme music at top volume.

Blaine pushes the button on the SodaStream, the hiss of bubbles a satisfying burst of white noise and a promise of delicious, relaxing refreshment. Beside him, Kurt jumps in shock, almost fumbling the kettle of water.

“God, I’m never going to get used to that,” Kurt mutters darkly, making Blaine’s heart fall a little.

“Maybe you’d feel better if you blew some stuff up,” Sam says to Rachel. He holds out his controller to her.

“Or did some yoga,” Kurt adds.

Rachel turns sharply toward him. “When do I have time for yoga?” she asks. “You know what my schedule is like!”

Kurt rolls his eyes and shakes his head when Blaine offers him a glass of soda, not even meeting his eyes. “Elliott says - “

Blaine takes a big gulp of his drink to drown out whatever it is that Elliott might have said. He’s tired of hearing about Elliott. He wants to be a supportive friend, but he’s also kind of tired of hearing about Rachel right now. And as much as he likes playing video games, it’s been a long week, and he just wants some _space_. He wants Kurt and space and nothing else.

Breathing in through his nose, he swirls the soda around his mouth, relishing the bubbles dancing on his tongue, and reminds himself that he has everything he wants.

He just doesn’t know how such a big apartment can feel so small sometimes, and he’s not even trying to get Kurt alone right now, not that he’d mind all that much, because being alone behind that curtain - even with their friends right on the other side - is one of the very best parts of living with Kurt, and there are many, many, _many_ wonderful parts of living with Kurt. It’s pretty much perfect, actually.

Taking another breath and holding onto that thought, Blaine pours another two glasses of soda and brings them over to Sam and Artie.

“I _cannot believe_ you think you need a personal assistant,” Kurt snaps out at Rachel, setting down his mug sharply on the kitchen table.

“No, listen - “ she starts.

“You know what, Rachel? I am done listening.” Kurt turns on his heel and stalks into their bedroom.

Okay, it’s not always perfect, Blaine thinks with a sigh.

He misses having a door he can shut. In a weird way, he misses having a curfew and being shut in the lonely silence of his parents’ house. He doesn’t want to go back there to live, but he misses having a reason to leave at the end of a night. He misses being able to.

Blaine takes a sip of his drink, watches Artie blow something up on the screen, and murmurs, “Excuse me,” to Rachel before she can turn on him. Because he might live here, but he _can_ actually leave.

Blaine finds Kurt angrily sorting through his rack of clothes, pulling the hangers across the bar with sharp, frustrated little screeches.

“I just need a minute,” Kurt tells him curtly, and Blaine would take it as a rejection, except that he knows exactly how Kurt is feeling. He loves living here, and he loves their friends, but it’s too much sometimes. It’s too much a lot of the time, actually, making Kurt short with everyone. It’s definitely too much right now.

“Let’s go out,” Blaine says, keeping his voice low so they aren’t overheard.

Kurt turns cool eyes to him and says, “Out? It’s after nine. We’ve already had dinner. I don’t really want to go sit through a late movie if we could even agree on one.”

“Let’s go to a club,” Blaine says, his heart beating faster just at the thought. “Just us. Let’s get out of here and go dancing.”

It takes a moment, but Blaine can see when the idea filters through Kurt’s impressive armor and actually hits his brain, going from another thing to do to the perfect escape.

Kurt blinks slowly, takes a long breath, and meets his eyes with an excitement Blaine goes weak with relief to see. “Oh,” he says breathlessly. He looks back at his clothes with a much more focused expression. “Give me a half hour to get ready. I’ll be fast.”

Blaine leans in to kiss him on the cheek, steadying himself on Kurt’s shoulder. “Okay,” he says happily and goes to change his shirt for going out.

Greenwich Village isn’t exactly close to Bushwick, but it’s worth the trip on the subway, bumping shoulders in the car as they clatter along. The club was first suggested by a guy Blaine met at one of Kurt’s band’s shows - Kurt says he was hitting on Blaine at the bar, but Blaine thinks he was just friendly; he certainly smiles widely enough on the nights he’s there when Kurt and Blaine are - but it’s turned out to be one of Blaine’s favorite places in the city. It’s always busy, the music is always great, and the crowd is always welcoming. There are both men and women, which makes it feel a lot less aggressive than that leather bar he and Kurt had accidentally visited for about a nanosecond that one time. Plus the bartenders are cute, and at least two of them are huge Broadway fans, which makes Kurt feel at home.

It’s sharp and cold outside, but as soon as they get in the door it feels like a sultry summer night, warm, thick, and humid. Blaine takes off his coat and feels like he’s peeling off a thick, numbing layer of skin with it, leaving him extra sensitive and able to move freely for the first time in weeks. Even in the entryway, he can feel the music sinking into his bones, filling his lungs, vibrating off of his eyelashes and bare forearms. He can feel his muscles relax. He can stand taller. He can _breathe_.

And they’re only in the _entrance_ to the club. Yes, this was the best idea.

They check their coats, their feet already beginning to move with the beat as they wait for their claim tickets, and Kurt’s eyes are sparkling when he turns to Blaine with a smile and says with excitement Blaine can almost taste on the air, “Come on.”

Blaine takes a deep breath and follows him into the seething crowd, letting his worries drop to the ground behind him as he goes.

He stays near Kurt, always aware of where he is and always enjoying watching the way he moves so freely with the beat, but part of why Blaine likes going dancing so much is not just that he can pull Kurt close and dance with him as Kurt gives him his sultriest shimmy right back but also that he can be locked to him by music and love even without being right next to him. Their bodies can be in sync even without touching. They can be right in the same moment without having to be in the exact same space.

Every step, every beat, every spin, every glance of their eyes off of each other, they’re experiencing it together.

And it’s not just the two of them; the whole room is there in the same moment, too.

It’s like being on stage surrounded by his friends, except there are no steps to remember and no judges to impress. Blaine can just let go.

He can let himself be with the music, be with Kurt, be with hundreds of other people, be in all of the room’s amazing energy and not have to give but take. He takes the beat, takes the smiles, takes the attention, takes it all and doesn’t have to give anything back. He just has to be a part of it, part of something so much bigger than himself.

Life in the apartment is crowded and complicated. NYADA is surprisingly hard. Even Kurt can be prickly and distant when Blaine needs him most. A lot of the time, Blaine feels like he’s living a life on eggshells.

But in the club, it’s so easy. Everyone there is in sync, bound together by the rhythm of the music. Everyone is there for the same reason: to have fun. There’s no pressure to do or be anything else but happy. It’s easy to get lost in the sea of body glitter and skin, surrounded by faces he barely knows if at all, as well as the one body he knows best in the world.

Somehow, despite how crowded it is, it feels huge and free.

There’s nothing to hear but the music as Blaine lets himself get swallowed up by the crowd. There’s nothing to see but the hundreds of people filling the room and the lights showing them off, Kurt a gorgeous swirl of purple shirt, lithe waist, and bright smile a few feet away. There’s nothing but Blaine’s body and his heart and the freedom of being unfettered.

He raises his hands over his head and _moves_ , nothing to hold him back.

Kurt flashes him a knowing smile over his shoulder, and Blaine grins back, laughing with the joy of being near but not worried when a dark-haired man ends up between them, moving with the same beat and fitting his movements easily to Blaine’s.

Blaine’s blood warms, but he doesn’t stop dancing or shift to let him closer. He’s not so naive that he thinks the room is filled with friends like in glee club. He knows there are offers in the touches and glances of the men around him, and if he’s honest he likes them. He likes the way the man’s eyes focus on his arms, his hips. Of course he does. He loves the attention. He loves feeling attractive. He loves feeling wanted.

But he isn’t tempted. He can feel the pull of a gorgeous man, and the room is certainly filled with them, but he isn’t tempted to join him when they look. He doesn’t want to be with them. He just likes being accepted.

He likes fitting in here. He likes being seen. He likes being welcome instead of being reviled. He likes not having to pretend he’s anything but wholly who he is, alive and sexual and out.

He likes knowing he can pull Kurt in for a dance or a kiss and not be judged. No one will care. They might whistle, they might want, but they won’t care.

There are so few places, even in New York, where the eyes on him all feel friendly and appreciative, ready to celebrate who they are and what they have. There are few places where he can just love Kurt and love his life and who he is without anyone judging him for it.

He doesn’t have to put on a show or a polite face. He already fits in. It makes Blaine feel like he can forget everything and just fly free. He forgets the man watching him, lifts his face to the lights, and falls deeper into the music.

Song blends into song, and Blaine smiles fast and bright at Kurt when Lady Gaga’s voice begins to pour out of the speakers. Kurt twirls his way around the few guys between them and loops his arms around Blaine’s neck, singing into his ear, almost inaudible over the din of the room. He’s solid and lovely against him, and Blaine anchors his hands on Kurt’s slim hips and sings back into his dancing eyes, spinning him out as the song rises higher and letting him go instead of pulling him back so that Kurt can jump up onto the table and strike a pose before leaping back into the crowd.

It’s flirty and teasing, a gentle chase, and Blaine doesn’t mind that someone takes Kurt’s spot on the table before Blaine can claim it, because it’s just another indication that they fit in here. They aren’t doing anything strange. They aren’t out of place or odd. They’re just part of the crowd. They’re just two more men dancing, laughing, in love.

No matter that he’s in a polo shirt instead of a mesh vest, no matter that he’s not six feet tall and built like Sam, no matter that he only has eyes for one man here instead of playing the field like so many others are, Blaine doesn’t feel out of place at all.

No, here in this room full of dancers and music, his mind feels quiet, his chest feels light, and his heart feels free. He feels right at home.

The song hits the chorus again, and he finds himself jumping with the rest of the crowd, Kurt a flash of purple shirt and pale skin out of the corner of his eye, caught just as he is in the moment.

He knows Kurt likes it, too. They both live for music. They both love for it to take them over. They both love to get lost in the physical, not just in the bedroom but on the dance floor. He knows it’s a release for Kurt, too. He can see it in every twist of Kurt’s hips, every spark of his smile, every strut and spin. Kurt needs this explosion of energy and life, too. He needs to shut off his busy brain and let his body and heart lead, too.

Kurt, who works too hard and who has so many sharp edges Blaine is trying to learn to avoid, looks so _relaxed_ , his face open, his movements easy, and his eyes closed.

It makes the next breath for Blaine that much easier to see him that way.

And he gets to go home with him. Not just with the same Kurt he has every day, who is amazing enough and who he can’t quite believe he’s lucky enough to get to live with, but with this happy, loose Kurt, high on dancing and satisfied with his life.

Blaine knows just what his skin is going to taste like with sweat and stray body glitter coating it. A bit of arousal uncurling in his stomach as he watches the tendon in Kurt’s neck flex as he throws his his head back, Blaine finds himself looking forward to tracing it with his tongue and pulling off those clinging clothes to touch the gorgeous body beneath.

But not yet. Not yet. They aren’t done here.

They dance until Blaine’s lungs feel like they’re going to burst with joy and exertion wrapped up together. When Kurt comes over and yells in his ear, “I need a drink,” Blaine follows him readily to the bar, wraps his arms around Kurt’s waist and presses his forehead against Kurt’s sweat-damp hair, and rocks with the beat with his eyes closed as Kurt orders for them both. He feels drunk and dizzy, swaying on his feet with the music and with the lightness in his heart.

Kurt smooths his hand down Blaine’s arm with a fond smile, Blaine kisses Kurt’s shoulder in reply, and nobody blinks. Nobody cares. The guy beside Kurt might look a little jealously at Blaine, but that’s about it.

“Are you getting tired?” Kurt asks, his breath warm against Blaine’s ear as he hands him a bottle of water. “Do you need to go soon?”

Blaine shakes his head, pulling his arms away to open his bottle and then settling a hand on the small of Kurt’s back as he takes a drink.

He never wants to go. If he could live here in this moment, at home in this crowd with Kurt by his side, he would.

Kurt catches his finger in one of Blaine’s belt loops and looks dreamily out at the floor for a moment before turning back to Blaine. “Are you sure?” he asks.

“I’m happy,” Blaine tells him.

Kurt’s smile is wide and bright - nothing sharp, nothing brittle, nothing held back. “I am, too,” he says.

Blaine leans into him and takes another drink, catching his breath and grounding himself against this man he loves so _much_. He watches the dancers moving in an undulating ocean in front of them, feels the hard strength in Kurt’s body and the helpless bounce in his own feet in time with the thump of the music, and can’t keep a thought in his head with the way he’s so saturated by the experience all around him. All he can do is feel. And he feels _good_. Nothing else, no worries, no fears, no failures. He just feels good.

It’s amazing.

Of all of the wonders that moving to New York has given him - them both, as individuals and as a couple - gay clubs are one of the very best.

“I love New York!” he says in Kurt’s ear. “And you!”

He can feel Kurt’s laugh in the shake of his chest against his arm, and Kurt presses a quick kiss to the corner of Blaine’s mouth and replies, “I do, too.”

Here everything feels big and wonderful. Everything feels possible. Everything feels absolutely amazing.

Blaine rests his head on Kurt’s strong shoulder, hums with the music, watches the lights sparkle and spin, soaks up the heat from Kurt’s body, and just lets himself feel it all.

**Author's Note:**

> Reminder: I am spoiler-free! Thanks!


End file.
